The Welsh Hills
by Gil-dae
Summary: Will returns to Wales one last time to visit the grave of his beloved Bran Davies and reflect on years spent with the raven boy.


            Just a little story that kinda popped into my head as I was wondering what would happened to them in the end and I was in a depressed death mood.  I hope you like it.  

            And yes there is slash, of the Will/Bran persuasion.  

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The Welsh Hills

            The Welsh hills, he said once to me, were the only hills one could fully love with every bone in their body.  And as I meandered through them, I understood perfectly what he said.  A gentle breeze blew across me as I moved through the land, grasses tickling my legs.  Occasionally, I stumbled along a house or two, but I veered away from them.  I could not see people, not now.  Instead, I stumbled forward, letting myself get lost in the labyrinth of fields and pastures in front of me.  

            _"Let the wind blow across your face and imagine that you are alone, so alone with only this country spreading out forever.  Wouldn't that be lovely?  Can you see it?" _

_            "What if I imagined it with just one other?"  _But I let my imagination get away, I knew.  Even when I said, those words were misgivings in my heart.  How could I fall into the trap of aging I felt?  How did I not see pain awaiting me at the end of the brightly lit tunnel, darkness ready to swallow every shred of joy left in me?  But here I was, alone in these hills seemingly stretching out before me without end.  I felt my legs slowing.  It was too much for my great spirit to bear.  I lowered myself to the grass and fell back with a thud.  My body shook, and silently, biting my lip, I cried.  Tears rolled down my cheeks and to the ground beside me.  Blood trickled down my lip from where my teeth cut in to it; it mingled with my tears on the ground below me.  I sobbed and sobbed with such force, as I had not felt in my life.  _Help me,_ I cried out.  But there was no one there that would answer my calls here alone.  

            "Oh, what has happened to me, to you?" I wept.  "Why did it come to this?"  His sweet face, broken into a bright grin, his shining eyes, so aloof, so beautiful…and I lost it.  Once it was within my grasp but the years whittled away at that image.  

            But was I crying for loss or for release?  It was hard to watch through the years as his body deteriorated to the weak form it was, consumed by disease.  And I aged gracefully, peaking, and then stopping.  I stopped just at the age when he died.  If he would never age, then neither would I.  For, in truth, I died alongside him on that day, so long ago. 

            I lifted myself from the grass, hiccupping with the sobs, and commenced to turn around in the direction I came from.  Behind me, I left something.  And I craved once more for one look, no matter how hard it was upon me.  Reminiscing might bring me again to tears, but there was one last look I needed before I deserted this land for now.  

            _"Promise me…" he gasped on his deathbed, clasping my hand, "promise me that you will not let me rot away alone.  Do you remember…can you see the gravesite of my dog…the one I had when we met, yes, Cafall…bury me there, beside him, for even now I know that he was beyond important to me.  Please, it is my last wish.  And…don't leave me, either.  My spirit is so restless…"  _But when I considered the prospect of leaving, those last words returned to haunt me.  My mind inched closer to the deep vault that was that day I stashed away secretly.  The vault where I could keep that memory in check until my soul was able to handle its reemergence.  

            Hesitantly, I turned the lock, and a flood of words assaulted me as I strode despondently through the hills of Wales.  

            _I rushed into the small room in his house where he insisted on living out and ending his days.  My heart pounded in me, and it took all my self-control to hold back the flood of tears ready to spill across my eyes.  There, in front of me, I saw him, his skin translucent, sweaty and weak.  He smiled at me, barely able to move his mouth.  _

_            "Will," he cracked out.  I knelt beside him and grasped his hand in mine.  He rolled over, groaning at the pain, so he could see me fully.  "I'm glad you are here.  The doctor left a few minutes ago; I'm sure you ran in to him."  I nodded solemnly.  The doctor had directed me here, in fact, saying that…well that was a bit much to think about.  _

_            "It is alright now, my dear.  Do not fear for yourself.  I will protect you, with every power I have."  But it was fruitless to save him now.  I did not even try.  Instead, I helplessly watched as he let out a wheezing cough.  His thin frame shook with it.  I rose up just a bit and wrapped my arms around him, careful not to damage him.  "There is no fear," I whispered to him, placing a kiss on the top of his white head.  He moaned, and I pulled away.  _

_            "Will, did I tell you how much I loved and admired you?" he wondered, putting a trembling hand to my cheek.  His cold skin sent shivers down my spine, but I did not move.  "Did I tell you that from the moment we met I knew that we would forever be like this, lovers to the ends of the earth?"  _

_            "My dear Bran," I muttered.  "Bran, oh, Bran."  I could not help but let a tear flow down my cheek.  But Bran wiped it away, smiling.  _

_            "No tears now, Will," he scolded playfully.  I gave a wet laugh and kissed his cheek.  _

_            "My apologies," I responded respectfully.  Bran reached up and felt my hair, running his hands along it to its ends at the base of my neck.  I let him touch my skin again, gently caressing me and savoring the warmth radiating from me.  And I relished his touch as if it was the cool night breeze over me, when we sat together outside, alone, talking, laughing.  _

_            "Will," Bran asked, "I have a question."  I waited.  "When…when we were with each other…sometimes I had this strange sensation that there was something I should know that I did not…but you knew it very well…had lived it…and I should comprehend," he stammered.  My heart froze and my throat tightened.  "And you would know how to explain this, Will.  You have answers for me, even if I might not see their meanings."  He chuckled.  But I perceived that this was his last moment, our last…let that train of thought drop.  I could speak with him of this, could I not?  Oh, at least let him pass from here knowing what happened.  _

_            And so I plunged into my tale, recounting all of the events since the day we met, as he needed to hear them ever since the Light triumphed.  There were no doubts in my mind that what I was doing was right enough.  His fading hearing deserved to soak up the words falling from my mouth.  I gazed into his face intently as I spoke though my mind was on another time, another place, reliving those first days that we even met, slowly, until the night when he lost his grip on these events.  Bran leaned back in the large collection of pillows with a passive smile on his face.  _

_            "I…can see it," Bran said.  His shut his eyes.  "I can see…what it was you mentioned before.  Will, it's all there now."  With much effort, he turned his head to me and opened his heavy lids.  "I am weak, Will.  I am glad that you are here, with me as you have been for years on end.  And my mind is no longer restless."  Then, he gave me his final request, clutching my hand tightly.  His voice faded to a whisper.  _

_            "Do you know that I love you?" he murmured.  I bent down to him and placed a tender kiss on his lips.  They were so cold.  He put a hand to my hair again, his lips parted just slightly in a smile.  "Will…__Stanton__…youngest of the old…"  _

_            Suddenly, behind us there was a great flash of light as the sun peeked from a break in the hills.  Bran gasped at its brightness before letting out a sigh.  And as the sun faded below the horizon, so did the breath of Bran Davies._

_            "My dear Bran," I whispered, wrapping my arms around his lifeless form.  "The raven boy that I forever loved, now flying away from me on your shining wing, Pendragon, how I treasured you.  Bran, Bran!"  My tears slipped onto his lifeless face and down his cheeks.  I kissed his cold face, his lifeless lips, but there was nothing more of breath or heat in him.  Only the shell where his uncontrollable spirit once dwelt.  _

If I thought hard enough about it, I still felt his thin fingers brushing against me.  But thinking took too much energy, and my heart was too weak to bear it.  Let the dead lie where they are.  

            Unless it is Bran Davies.  I had to visit him one last time.  

            I moved silently through the valley, only the sound of an occasional bird or the shuffling of my feet on a rock heard.  Slowly, the ground rose underneath me.  The wind picked up and blew sharply against me, ruffling my dark hair not touched by age.  Why should it be?  When Bran died, he was only fifty.  I myself was that age, as I shall be until the end of the Light and the Old Ones.  

            His headstone was the only break in the hillside.  I quickened my pace to reach it.  There, at its base, were still flowers, flowers I brought to him only last week after I avoided this site for a full year, wilting now but there all the same.  A few petals floated in my direction, flying past my face.  I stopped a few feet from the sight.  My mind told me to move forward, but the legs attached to my body had no intention of that.  My knees buckled and I fell to the ground.  In front of me was his grave, shining in the light of the afternoon sun.  I looked up and through bleary eyes read the headstone.  

            _Here lies Bran Davies, the raven boy_

_            The raven that had ways to make_

_            The youngest see what rode to take_

_            And so shall he rest forever in sleep_

_            Now that his time is done_

Below that, in the Old Speech, carved small, was an extra line.  I wrote it in myself, when the time came.  

            _Sleep forever, young Pendragon, in the grace and the glory of the Light _

Tears slipped down my cheeks and fell onto his grave.  I balled up my fists, little rivulets of blood pouring from where my nails cut into my skin.  My knuckles turned white as I tried hard to fight back the emotions inside of me.  

            But it was inevitable, his passing, as I realized with clarity.  One year ago, I witnessed his very death.  One year ago, I had the only person that I ever bonded with wrenched from my grasp and my heart, leaving a bleeding wound inside of me.  And it bled and bled itself dry, until the fount, which fed it, ceased to flow and left me with only a hollow aching inside, an aching that time itself would never wipe clear from me.  If only I had perceived earlier the risks with his love.  

            "Oh, but what of risks!" I cried out.  Were there not decades we spent in the other's warmth, basking in their light and relishing their speech.  Were we not happy as we lived together, no matter how dark the parting?  Partings were sorrow only, when the parting was that of death, forced upon you by nature.  And when one was an immortal that would wander the earth forevermore without hope of freedom, then the parting was a death for both.  But I loved his life, and cherished those moments with him here in the Welsh hills.  

            _"You will stay with me, won't you?  I mean…really stay?"  _Bran asked me when we were but twenty, though long before I knew my answer.  To hell with death!  I let him take my life and lived it fully with him.  

            My tears dried on me, caught up in the wind swirling in a great cloud around me.  I lifted myself to my feet with confidence.  I bowed my head to Bran, my only lover, friend, companion for life.  I bent to the ground and ran my hand along the grasses on his burial mound.  

           Slowly, my heart heavy but no longer troubled, I made my way back down the slope.  When I reached its base, I spared one more look back at the grave.  Up there on the hill, I thought I saw the dim outline of a man, tall, strong, with white hair and pale skin.  He had his hand raised to me in farewell.  And beside him was a dog with silver eyes, wagging its tail, tongue lolling from its mouth.  I smiled at Bran, and in this vision's face, I thought I saw a smile also.  In one gust of wind, the spirit dissipated, carried towards me on the air.  I felt something tickle my face as I whirled around.  

            But there was nothing other than joyous laughter and the deep rumbling bark of a dog.  

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            Please review and make me feel special.  And Bran…even if he is *sniff* dead.  He would like that in his afterlife.  

{~.^}


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